A recent sighting report came to me early last week. It took me a day or two to get the scene, but I made it out and scoured the area with Shane Corson of the Olympic Project to find some interesting things. But first, the backstory…

On March 1st, a young man encountered a sasquatch on the Olympic Peninsula on the edges of a marsh. He was on the side of the road at a pull-out throwing rocks at a log next to a river around dusk when he noticed that small rocks were landing in the water nearby. At first he assumed these were his rocks ricocheting back off the log he was aiming for, but when rocks started landing at his feet, he realized that this wasn’t the case. Shortly after, he observed what he first thought was a reddish-brown bear barreling through the grassy swamp on the other side of the river. It was reportedly snorting, huffing, and whistling as it ran. The young man stood there, excited to see a bear with the safety of a river between him and the animal. The “bear” was on all fours as it ran behind a brushy area and stopped. Then it stood up on its hind legs. The witness described how it kept getting taller and taller and taller as it stood. It was much taller than any bear could be in this area, standing approximately eight feet tall, looking over the top of the brush it ran behind. That was all it took for the young man to immediately leave the area in a panic. He later confided in a local shop owner that had a bigfoot cast on display in his establishment, and that shop owner notified one of my contacts in the area, Lorri Jo Hamilton, who notified me of the encounter less than a week after it happened.

I arrived on the scene with Lorri Jo, her friend Norm, and Shane Corson from the Olympic Project to look around on Wednesday, March 7th. The tire marks left by the young man as he peeled away from the scene were still visible in the ground. Shane and I crossed the river and scoured the swamp and surrounding area for over an hour. In our exploration, we uncovered two unusual things.

First, a large log had recently been moved aside from where it was resting in the reeds. The log was about five feet long, and maybe 20 inches in diameter. There were grass tufts growing upside-down on the underside of the log, proving it had once rested with the grass facing upward but had been turned. There were also small plants (maybe 1.5 inches tall) growing from the underside of the log that had started turning in their growth to seek the sunlight (plants are phototropic and will always grow towards the sunlight). Using these clues, I would guess the log was turned upside down maybe a week before we found it. This coincides well with the sighting date, which was only six days before our visit.

Secondly, and more importantly, a possible footprint was located in the swamp just a few yards from the overturned log. There were few places in the reeds that would record any impressions, but one was located in a pile of animal scat. The surrounding grass had been disturbed in a fan-like shape. There was the suggestion of toes impressed in the grass, a wide forepart of a foot, and a moderately narrow heel, though wider than a bear’s heel. The length of the print was 14 inches long.

The shape of this possible print is congruent with other footprints collected from the area by Lorri Jo Hamilton. One individual sasquatch in the area has left a number of prints that have the same fan-shaped configuration of the foot as was observed in this possible footprint, as can be seen below. It is very possible that the same sasquatch left both prints, or perhaps a closely-related individual.

Derek Randles met us out at the site a few hours after our investigation. Between us three, we could recount more than a dozen encounter reports from the general area, so this new one was of no surprise. This area is being closely watched by my contacts in the area and the members of the Olympic Project that were involved. If more evidence comes out of here, I’ll keep you posted.